Bonita Alice: 2011

Events Above The Gulf

Events Above The Gulf was commissioned in 2010 for the new premises of Deneys-Reitz Attorneys in Sandton (Johannesburg), South Africa.

The work comprises 20 units, each 32cm in diameter (unframed). The medium is wool dust and archival glue on paper.

(Click on image to enlarge)

My interest has long been with matters psychological.
In recent years my focus has been the emotional space between human and non-human animals and the inherent disquiet that haunts it. The problem of articulating that troubled and complicated space visually is what preoccupies me.

Perhaps I want to address in pictures - and sometimes in text -the dysfunction that is seldom acknowledged in our dealings with other animals.

My work is at least as much about humans as it is about other animals, because in the broken alliance, it is humans who have changed... it is our values, our practices and our understanding of ourselves in the world that are different now. The broken bond and consequent loss of empathy allows us to commit, or support, unspeakable cruelty against other animals as an integral part of our contemporary systems. We cannot reasonably claim ignorance though we do routinely by our actions (or inaction).
Animals have very little power now. Such inequality of power in a shared environment, we know, can benefit only a few. Indeed, it is worth asking, whether humans actually benefit only superficially, and if we can have entirely escaped being fundamentally diminished by both the loss of the bond and the burden of culpability.
In past images, my Beast often evaded a familiar form. In more recent works I’ve accepted the challenge of known animal forms, though it’s not fur or smell, but the intimacy of mutual need I wish to capture.

It is a difficult area to negotiate, burdened as animal images are by Art’s history where, more often than not, the animal depicted is not actually the work’s subject. One must also navigate around kitch and Postmodernism’s grapplings. The image of animals must somehow be recoded to be read with any sympathy, (and with acknowledgement of the individual's experience), just as, it has been argued, with certain traditions of human representations.

In my new works, the idea of human refinement often provides my starting point. Humans are elegant, urbane and worldly wise, and our sophistication is the crowbar between us that prevents a sympathetic and intelligent engagement with animals and animal-ness.

CV

South African, born 1962 in Johannesburg. Moved to London, UK in August 2007.

9 solo exhibitions in South Africa, including Strangers of Commanding Aspect, 2015, Beast in a Dangerous Landscape, 2012, Beast at Home, 2010, Anticipated Memory, 2007.

Represented by Gallery AOP, Johannesburg.

Completed Fine Art degree, majoring in Sculpture and Art History, 1984, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and Masters in Fine Art, 1990, majoring in Sculpture, Michaelis School of Arts, University of Cape Town.

Group exhibitions include Anonyme Zeichner 2015 (Anonymous Drawings), Berlin, Germany (touring exhibition), the 2014 Jerwood Drawing Prize Exhibition, London, UK (touring exhibition), Lubomirov-Easton A5 Project for Art Athina, Athens, Greece, 2014 and 2015, a 2-part, site-specific installation commissioned for the 25th Sao Paulo Bienal in 2002, various exhibitions of South African Art in South Africa and internationally, !Xoe Site-Specific, an exhibition of new South African site-specific works 1998. Works in public, corporate and private collections, including Johannesburg Art Gallery, Durban Art Museum, SABC, Standard Bank, UNISA, and work commissioned for Deneys-Reitz Attorneys, Johannesburg. Worked as lecturer and tutor in Fine Art in the tertiary and informal sectors, until leaving teaching to work as a full-time artist in 2003. bonitaalice@gmail.com

Bonita Alice

Events Above The Gulf

Followers

Art On Paper Gallery (AOP), Johannesburg